Tcl-8.4.6

Approximate build time:  0.9 SBU
Required disk space:     22.7 MB

This package and the next two are only installed to support running the test suites for GCC and Binutils. Installing three packages just for testing purposes may seem like overkill, but it is very reassuring, if not essential, to know that our most important tools are working properly. Even if the the test suites are not run in this chapter (we recommend not running them), these packages are still required to run the test suites in the next chapter.

Prepare Tcl for compilation:

cd unix
./configure --prefix=/tools

Build the package:

make

If you want to test the results, then issue: TZ=UTC make test. However, the Tcl test suite is known to experience failures under certain host conditions that are not fully understood. Therefore, test suite failures here are not surprising, and are not considered critical. The TZ=UTC parameter sets the time zone to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) also known as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), but only for the duration of the test suite run. This ensures the clock tests are exercised correctly. More information on the TZ environment variable will be given later on in Chapter 7.

Install the package:

make install

Now make a necessary symbolic link:

ln -s tclsh8.4 /tools/bin/tclsh

Installed programs: tclsh (link to tclsh8.4), tclsh8.4

Installed library: libtcl8.4.so

tclsh8.4 is the Tcl command shell.

libtcl8.4.so is the Tcl library.